The Fearful Child
by Skyeblux
Summary: The TARDIS picks up an errant transmission of a terrified child that chills Rose's heart.  Together the Doctor and Rose investigate the ghostly goings on and strange disappearances in an old world village. Mystery/Episodic/Romance TEN/Rose
1. Chapter 1

Title: The Fearful Child

Author: Skyeblux

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Ten/Rose

Genre: Episodic, Introspection, Romance, Spooky Ghosts

Summary: The TARDIS picks up an errant transmission of a terrified child that chills Rose's heart. Together the Doctor and Rose investigate the ghostly goings on and strange disappearances in an old world village but as even the Doctor is effected by the visions and possessions, can the dynamic duo save the day before they join the ranks of the restless dead?

AN: Set in a favourite place of mine! I will post some photographs to accompany the fic to give you an idea! You can view them at my Livejournal account, username: Skyeblux!

Chapter 1:

Rose Tyler was not sleeping. She had been not sleeping for the past two long hours, tossing and turning in frustration. She had faced down anamorphous beings, grotesque monsters of nightmare, shades from the underworld, the Emperor of the scourge of the universe, her mother and a time travelling alien on a sugar high and yet watching one 1960's thriller chiller with a delighted Doctor made her afraid to close her eyes and drift into blessed sleep. The Doctor loved Hitchcock's "Psycho"; he may be a super-duper, superior genius but when it came to human psychology and emotions he was on a long, slow, learning curve. She worried her bottom lip as she hoped that his core basis of study wasn't the psychopathy of one, Norman Bates though, considering how clueless, said Doctor could be, she wouldn't be at all surprised.

Finally Rose Tyler gave up and heavily hulked her bulk out of bed in search of some hot chocolate or a Doctor distraction, which ever came first. She gratefully patted the thrumming wall in thanks for the TARDIS's thoughtful but failed attempts at calming her as, blurry eyed and dressed in nothing but her white, stripy, kitten top and pink multi-kittened shorts, she marched into the labyrinthine corridors of the ship.

Strangely the Doctor was nowhere to be seen and she pondered briefly if the oh so magnificent Time Lord was actually asleep before remembering how hyper and hopeful he was earlier in the evening when he tried to convince her to watch the rest of the "Complete Works of Alfred Hitchcock" as she yawned incredulously at him. She'd just poked her head round the door to the console room to check for signs of life when some sort of fizzling static emitted in a jarring hiss. She sighed heavily at the doomed ceiling, failing to repress a fond smile, "What's the matter with you then, old girl? You want me to fetch his Lordship?"

"Help me! Please. Somebody? Is anybody there? Please, I'm scared. She's coming…" Silence crackled again over the broken white noise. The voice had the pitch and timbre of a small child, a boy; a boy who was choking on muffled sobs and sniffing loudly through a running nose. He sounded so small and helpless, so lost.

Rose stared unblinking at the Time rotor, pulsing its steady, calm hues, her hand trembling gently over her mouth, eyes wide and moistening with unshed tears. In an instant she was a whirl of action, flicking buttons and spinning wheels, "I'm here. I can hear you. Don't worry, sweetheart." The sound, like an old television set at the end of broadcasting, abruptly ceased. "No, no, no! What did I do?"

The usual mysterious and ancient moans of the TARDIS seemed a deafening, uninterrupted silence as she continued to charge around the console looking for flashing lights or tell tale signs of…something. "Hello? Can you hear me?" she cried, pausing then and unconsciously holding her breath, straining her ears for the faintest flicker of a voice above the pounding of her heart. Suddenly the vast environs of the time machine seemed stifling and claustrophobic. The Doctor, she needed to find the Doctor.

- x -

There is a little townland, on a little coast of the little island of Ireland called Cultra. In this little area of the globe history is brought to life in vivid and magical recreation. The Ulster Folk Museum is secreted away from the bustling commuter traffic, secluded by dense, verdant trees, green fields and a babbling brook with cascading waterfall on the estate of a prosperous, old mansion. Within its grounds is an authentic, "olde worldie" village, constructed from the rebuilt stones of actual buildings from antiquity. There is the village square with all the essentials of a flourishing rural life, the school house, steepled church, bank, manual printers, haberdashers, doctors, quaint pub and gardened manse with miles of countryside branching off and thatched, white washed, farmers cottages and mills with creaking water wheels, spotted on the outskirts. It really is like stepping back in time through some unseen portal.

There is a slightly more modern row of red bricked, terrace houses where school and youth groups can stay, sleeping on the doorstep of this rich, educational treasure. It's early summer, the swallows are flying and the twilights never reach the pitch blackness of a vast winter's sky and alone in a musty dorm room on the first floor of one of these terraces a young boy is trying and failing to get to sleep.

The atmosphere in the soft amber lit room is potent and precarious. Timothy rests a shaking hand against the liquid cool plaster of the bedroom wall and concentrates on sensation. The air is dense and moist like rising damp and stuffy library archives and there's a faint chill to it, unnatural and persistent even when he's wrapped snugly in his warm, worm-like sleeping bag. There's a constant tickle at the edge of his perception like something trying to materialise, his senses so alert that he can almost feel a muted presence like foam walls brushing his mind. The building creaks and bangs with old age and old systems and the hairs on his arm stand on end. His nerves frazzled, his vision conquered by the shadows in the corners and darkened street below his window.

Suddenly in the strained silence there's a bang, sharp like an axe hitting wood, and he screams.

- x-

"Ah, I knew you'd change your mind, always so indecisive you humans. What shall it be, "The Rope?" Nah, too strung out. "Rear Window?" Too much dramatic irony and the dog bothers me. Oh, how about "Vertigo", Jim-Jiminy-James Stewart, awh you got to love ol' Jimmy. Did you ever see Harvey? Well not SEE Harvey as that was the whole point you see. Harvey was a giant, invisible rabbit, can you imagine? Well not that you have to, I can take you to Lapis, they're a national treasure there, though I never meet one called Harvey…Rose?"

He had been wrestling with some unseen foe that appeared to be alive in his bedside cabinet before whirling around and practically bouncing for the door. Now he'd slammed on the Doctor brakes, better late than never, and was gazing at her intently, particularly at a stray tear that had leaked down her flushed cheek and the way she chewed violently at her thumb nail while jiggling about uneasily.

"Bad dream?" he asked sincerely, without a trace of mockery.

She opened and closed her stricken mouth a few times before any sound came out, "No dream," she almost whispered.

His concerned brow furrowed further as he gently clasped her arms to focus her, "Tell me?"

"I couldn't sleep," she stumbled. "Went looking for you in the console room and there was this sound like the static between radio stations and then a voice asking for help. He sounded so scared," her voice hitched on a broken sob.

"He?" the Doctor encouraged, lazily rubbing soothing circles into her bared skin.

"A boy, a child."

He knew the instinctual protectiveness and fear at hearing a child in distress, it was one of the most harrowing and potent sounds in the universe and he quickly understood her shaken dismay. Oh Rose, always so compassionate and caring.

"He said something else. He said "She was coming?" and then there was just silence apart from the static and I tried to get him back but I didn't know what to do and then it stopped all together. Who was it Doctor? How could I have heard a child in an empty console room, drifting in space?"

Her eyes pleaded with him for an answer or maybe just to say it wasn't real that nothing was wrong, just a random malfunction, old audio track, reborn in a freakish fault of electricity and mechanics. She'd prefer a condescending lecture on sleep deprivation and crazy imagination at the moment then the echo of terror and hopelessness coming from a child's mouth.

"Don't worry. You and me? We'll figure it out." It wasn't the answer she hoped for but as he drew her firmly against his lean, unyielding body and wrapped her in his embrace she couldn't help but instantly feel better. He was the Doctor and though it was just one boy, he would never ignore the cries of a child. This, whatever it was, would not stand.

Without warning the fabulous flying vessel jerked and launched to one side, shuddering like screeching cogs in a fractious, unoiled machine and sending the Doctor and Rose into an unceremonious heap on the floor. "Bloody internal reality motion stabilisers," he groused as he untangled his long limbs and leapt to his feet dragging a grimacing bundle of pink and yellow in tow. "Come on!"

The Doctor took off towards the console room with Rose hot on his heels, momentarily musing how natural her reactions had become amidst such discombobulating states of affairs.

"Oh you clever girl? The TARDIS is triangulating the original source of the transmission and hurtling towards it. How'd you manage that Rose and You? Is the hurtling really necessary, I mean for a Time machine you have an incongruous sense of urgency?" The lights seemed to flicker in enjoyment at his irksome expression and Rose was more confused than before, what did she do?

The engines wheezed to an asthmatic stop and the rotor gracefully stilled with almost personified smugness.

"Where are we?" Rose hefted herself once again of the grated floor and rubbed extrageratedly at her 'rear bumper'.

"Oh, it would be Earth wouldn't it and close to your time! We're in Holywood," he shrugged.

"Really? Wow!"

"No, Holywood, one 'L'. Holywood, Northern Ireland?"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 – The Spirit of a Tear

AN: Thank you so much for all your kind and wonderful reviews – made me do the happy dance! I really wanted to and tried to reply but kept telling me I didn't exist? So they really were appreciated!

-x-x-x-x-x-

"Oh 'ello!" the Doctor bubbled with a mega-watt smile as Rose peered over his shoulder, just shy of the threshold of their peripatetic home. "Sorry to barge in unannounced, but that's us, always gate crashing the best parties."

A young, blonde haired, blue eyed boy blinked at them, mouth ajar and pupils blow wide with startled indecision and a white knuckled grip on a TARDIS blue, sleeping bag.

Slowly and carefully the duo stepped into the dorm room and quietly closed the door to the mysteries within. "I'm the Doctor and this is Rose. Don't suppose you need a doctor? No?" The boy was unresponsive.

A delightedly smirk at rendering the kid gob-smacked and speechless passing over his face, _Still got it!_ and the Doctor's expression quickly morphed into a friendly, encouraging smile. He walked casually over to the child and hunched down on his knees, extracting the sonic screwdriver and waving it over the statuesque boy with a contemplative tongue resting on his top teeth. He loved those teeth.

The sonic beeped and he frowned in consternation, springing to his feet and looming over the bed. "Now that's interesting? What are you?" he asked more curiously than demanding but when no answer came he grabbed the limp body by the shoulders and repeated the question more firmly.

"I...I'm Timothy," the captive squeaked.

"Timothy from…? Planet, destination, origin, intergalactic co-ordinates?"

"Hmm…Saul near Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, Earth?"

The Doctor regarded him with an intense tilted and sceptical expression, peering into the boy's eyes like an alien lie detector. "Say Ahhhhh!" he stuck out his tongue and the boy hesitantly copied. Nothing. He roughly inspected the boy's ears and felt for lumps through his hair.

The screwdriver bleeped and the Doctor looked at it in arched eye-browed surprise, slowly straightening and following the whir around the room as if he was a puppy on a lead.

"Interesting…" he mumbled.

Rose having had enough of his parlour tricks piped up, "What's interesting?" following behind him. When he spun around he almost crashed into her, wincing an apology.

"It's not just the boy; it's the entire room, the atmosphere." He strode purposefully back to the shell-shocked resident and buzzed at him with a flick of the wrist.

"Oh, sorry! Human!"

"What?" Timothy choked.

"Human. Homo sapien, early 21st century. Sorry about all that. Ha, April Fool's, gotcha!"

"It's the end of May," Timothy replied in confusion as the Doctor ruffled at his rouge hair and jostled awkwardly.

"Right!" he beamed. "Just testing. Well done."

Rose rolled her eyes and realised that maybe she should mediate the situation.

"Hey Timothy. Do people call you Tim, Timmy? Anyway, don't mind him; he's only out for the weekend. Completely insane, bless his cotton socks." She flashed Timothy one of her universe saving, winning smiles with lots of teeth before roughly grabbing the Doctor by the arm and wheeling him back a few paces toward the demonstrative blue box.

"What's going on? What did you find?"

"Infrasound 17.79Hertz," he supplied, ever unhelpful.

"What's that when it's at home, then?" she tried not to sound too irritated at the infernal man.

"Infrasound is at a range beyond human hearing but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that your brain doesn't react to it. Many species can emit infrasound, usually as a way to panic to even paralyse their prey, even the earth tiger roars at 18Hertz in the infrasound scale. It makes you feel depressed and afraid like that tickle in the back of your brain that screams stay alert, there's foreboding, fear and danger ahead."

"Oh silly me, I thought that was a response to the glint of mischief you get in your eyes just before we have to run for our lives," she smirked.

"Oi! Don't dis the science!"

"Dis?" she looked thoroughly amused.

"Yes, dis! I'm cool; I'm down with the kids. Oh, speaking of…"

She rolled her eyes good naturedly at him as he skipped away.

"Timmy, me old chum. Remember those fond nights when I would poke in your ears and call you an alien? Well I was wondering if you'd noticed anything strange happening?" He leaned in like he knew the boy's innermost secret and wanted to play catch with it!

"The whole place is weird."

"Right, thanks!"

"No, I mean it's spooky. Out there, all those old houses and things. Michael says there's a ghost of a blue nun that walks the folk museum at night."

"Oh, please. I invented the blue nun story round a camp fire at the Hill of Tara in medieval Ireland. Wait, did you say folk museum?" And there was that mischievous glint! Rose glanced surreptitiously down to affirm that yes, she'd changed into her trousers and trainers. Thank goodness she wasn't the type to obsess over designer high heels and the sartorial art of matching perfection!

"Yeah, old buildings and stuff from the past." Timothy seemed to struggle to continue and the Doctor instinctively recognised that unsought touch of the otherworldly that vied equally for belief and avoidance. The sense tingling from the very pours of the skin for an audience and the sad loss of a hint of innocence and childhood. "They didn't believe me," he whispered.

"I'll believe you", and his voice was so soft and sincere, tinged with comfort and respectful attention. His smooth lips kinked in a knowing smile and were mesmerising like a tender caress in a sea of dispossessed souls or a single flame burning with hope and life in a darkened ballroom, drizzled with gossamer webs and empty chairs.

It warmed her somewhere deep inside to know that he would always listen, always believe, that this strange, ineffable alien, condescend to alight from his superior throne and champion the ridiculed and hopeless, the unheard and unheeded voice, finding importance in the smallest of lives and bravest of hearts.

"I couldn't sleep last night, too many thoughts and pictures in my head. This place does that to you. I was so aware and so scared and then I heard it, the clanging peel of the church bell, but the church is locked up at night, no one is there, no one living and I saw something. I can't really describe it, like a half remembered dream even though I stared at it afraid to move, even breath. I was like my brain was trying to recognise it but gave up and just showed me a dark blur and then it was gone and I didn't even realise I'd screamed or was crying 'til the lights come on and they started to laugh. That's why I'm in here on my own tonight, I…I wet the bed," A lone tear of shame and frustration glided from his youthful eyes like the dew of a bleak morning.

"I…I...don't know why I told you that," the boy sniffed and Rose's heart went out to him hoping that the Doctor would notice the gravity of a seemingly trivial submission from a young child.

"Shush!" the Doctor soothed and caught the drip like a precious butterfly lighting on his finger. "You ever wonder about the spirit of a tear? I mean, it's amazing. All that emotional energy colliding inside our heads until something has to give and we get this salty little droplet. It's really quite beautiful. No tear is born without a lifetime of influence and experience teaching us what hurts, what scares us, what motivates and thrills us. This tear is not just one feeling, it's like a memory book, a paradigm of all the times in your life that shaped who you are. You can't truly feel happiness until you appreciate what is sad or feel scared until you realise that at some time you felt so safe. Look at you, what seven years old? And you've already lived so much. You're incredible," he stared at him wistfully and full of awe and affection, a small smile of wonderment and the realisation of some vast and incomprehensible design, starting to form on Timothy's brightening face.

But suddenly, as if compelled to existence by sheer imagination and the telling itself, a haunting chime pierced the too still night and Timothy grabbed onto the Doctor's woollen coat and buried his face in its comfort.

"I think that's our cue!" The Doctor smiled quietly before gently extracting the small form and locking onto his expressive eyes. "Don't be afraid. You're not alone, and everyone gets scared sometimes, even me. But I get very angry at anything that would make such a brave and fearless boy cry and I'm going to go now and make sure that there is nothing out there that can touch you or hurt you. You're so full of promise and potential, so much life and nothing has the right to take that from you, you're life is yours and I can tell you're going to do great things with it," He winked cheekily and exerted a confidence and belief that Indiana Jones would be proud of!

"You stay here and look after my blue box," He rose and patted the TARDIS affectionately.

"If she gives you any bother, tell her I'll take her back to Hawaii and let the natives decorate her in grass, hula skirts and flower garlands again. I mean who ever heard of a Time machine with hay fever?" and with that he was out the door, a beautiful and vivacious blonde in tow, shuffling down the spiral staircase and unlocking the front door with his trusty sonic.


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you all, once again for your kind reviews. I still can't seem to reply to them ? Has disabled that function or is it just my stupid computer again? Anyway, ghostly goings on in chapter 3 and the Doctor being the Doctor!

Chapter 3 ~ The Corpse Bride

The night was faintly balmy with a premature explosion of summer scents, warmth and weather and the gravelled path crunched loudly beneath trainer clad feet. The ancient shapes of roof tops were silhouetted against the deep, royal blue sky and the crescent moon, bright and high, reflected off the anachronistic, white washed, wattle and dub of the old fashioned plaster. It was a tidy, well keep village, exuding character and charm but unusual like a series of postcards forming a three dimensional montage of history. And yes, there was almost something tangible in the air, like a heaviness on the ear drum, that resonated with myth and mystery and the excitement that comes from curiosity and exploration, especially when the situation is rife with inconsistencies and fear inducing vibrations.

They ran past the school house and manse, round the muted grass and cheery trees to the church that stood out on a background of stars and vast heavens. The mossed and barely readable tombstones captured the little light available in the glittering crystals through the marble. The cemetery felt timeless and serene, thus unnatural to the living whose lives hurtle pass at blindly speeds, rife with contention and moments of unequivocal joy. Rose, indoctrinated by horror movies and supernatural tales of television quacks felt her heart thump in anticipation and readiness as they passed through the stoned walls of the graveyard and the strange whir of the screwdriver forced heavy, old locks to tumble and click.

Inside was as still as the grave, an undisturbed relic of a former age, dust of dying stars and long dead skin floating in the eddying draft and stream of pale moonlight. Wooden pews, stone floors, an eagled lecturn with a weighty tomb open at Corinthians 13, majestic but simple pulpit and wall hangings of long burnt out candles in cast iron décor, all these greeted the pair with stereotypical familiarity. There was a smell also, like mown lawns, varnished pine and cold, stuffy and damp, encompassing walls. The natural associations formed, learnt from popular culture and media - envisaging vaults, crypts, midnight body snatching and unsolvable cases of apparitions and deathly harbingers.

Like a claxon, deafening in the respectful silence of years, the metal bell tolled once more, echoing with the acoustics of the old building.

"This way," Rose motioned, hurrying to the entrance and spotting an old, skelfed step ladder on one side and a spiral staircase on the other with a worn "no entry" sign and red roped barrier.

No trespassing and safety warnings, be damned with the Doctor on the scene, as he knocked the placard to the floor in his haste. One can't be concerned with propriety and privacy when dark deeds are suspected.

Several rickety floor boards were missing as they reached the top of the tower, not intended for public inspection. The cramped space was mildewed with woodworm and age and coated in dust and probably occupied by various things Rose decided not to dwell on. She felt a little dizzy and apprehensive, gazing down at the ghost town below from a stoned slit of a window. The air felt electric and alive, almost sentient. She knew it was probably her imagination, stirred by suggestive imagery, but that didn't stop the goosebumps or irrational dread that seemed to soak her soul.

The bell was still undulating with scarcely heard vibrations after a hefty strike. At first she thought they were alone. It was dark and insubstantial but gradually her heightened senses alerted her to a presence behind her and there on the floor was a young woman.

She was beautiful, soft blonde curls obscuring the fine features of a porcelain face, her eyes closed as if she were dreaming and a feminine, winsome expression to her slightly parted lips. The maiden was gowned in a delicate laced, white frock which dipped at her waist and cascaded out over her gentle curves and smooth, unblemished legs. She wore satin pumps and a white rose with thin, silken petals in her hair and just a touch of pink rouge on her cheeks.

At first glance she looked as if she had merely lain down to rest in some meadow in the hot, noontide sun, so peaceful and serene was she but on closer inspection something felt jaded and wrong, tugging at the entrails within. Her pallor was one of untimely death, a crusty tear of dried blood dying her light hair and she was so still, too still.

"Doctor, are you seeing…?"

"Yes," he replied soberly, crunching to examine the corpse bride hair but as he went to touch her, she faded away, incorporeal, like an image on a pond disturbed by a stone or landing duck. Rose let out a sorrowful gasp. Strangely she realised that she felt no fear only an empty despair. Her eyesight growing stronger, she saw it then, the bloody evidence of the crime, the darkened stain on the sturdy, old bell, the perfect circles of fresh blood spattered on the gnarled floor and the sense of rage and fear that stifled the air and clamped a cold hand around her heart.

-x-

They walked slowly back towards the TARDIS, the Doctor seemingly distracted and deep in thought. Another life torn mercilessly from the world that he didn't even have a chance to save. He was so expressive in this incarnation but Rose hated to see that culpable and harrowing look crease his brow. He was a voice to the mute even in death but no man can hold mastery over the wide universe, stop every atrocity and she knew that every death mask he witnessed was a taunting leer crooning, "You were too late" and reminding him how helpless he really was. No matter how many he rescued there would always be more praying for salvation and going unheard through the fabric of time.

She looped her arm through his and he covered her chilled hand unconsciously.

"Was that really a ghost?" she asked hoping to rein him back to the present and the comfort of an understanding peer in the chaos of their lives.

"Wellll…" he drawled. "Depends what you mean by ghost? Can the "soul" live on after the body as passed? Certainly quantum physists believe that emotions and feelings can generate energy and that opens the possibility that residual energy signatures can be picked up by sensitive minds if a life was taken in violence and turmoil. Though the rational beings of this era comment on that infrasound that is often associated with old, spooky buildings and that the iris can be affected as the brain tries to make sense of the muddle, causing people to see blurred images or out of focus beings as a side effect." He explained with less of his usual fervour.

"But you saw her too, right?" Rose prompted.

"Yes, but I'm not immune to irrational thought, in fact that phenomenon seems to be increasing exponentially to my exposure to…well you!"

She frowned, unsure whether to take that as a compliment or insult.

"But still Doctor, ghosts? Proper ghosts, with wedding dresses and bloody heads, I mean wow!"

"I know!" he brightened smiling at her like the universe had finally ceased to exist and left only them and their closeness to one another.

-x-

With the morning the Doctor's melancholy seemed to have lifted. Rose was unsure if she would ever get used to his mercurial mood swings but as he babbled on about their investigation and plans she couldn't help but be infected by his enthusiasm and thought clearly that this is where he belonged, the heart of the unreal, the shadow on the staircase, the light in the fog and hand to hold in a storm.

As usual others weren't as impressed by his probing mind as he cornered a school teacher in the accommodation's canteen over breakfast and rudely refused to be subtle.

"'ello I'm the Doctor, can we join you? Good!" He sidled onto one of the long, practical benches with a tray of scrambled eggs and toast. Rose blushed politely as she joined him for the unsuspected interrogation.

"So, your students say that you're a bit of an expert on this place, Mr. Web isn't it?"

The history teacher flushed and grinned meekly at the compliment.

"Bit spooky really. Like a mausoleum, a great big mausoleum with pony and trap rides and a little shop in the tourist centre!" he beamed as if this was the best news since sliced bread and where did that bizarre expression come from anyway, he could think of far more impressive things than sliced bread.

"Well yes, I did manage to get published for my work on local history in the scholar's almanac."

"So, what secrets didn't you share with the populace? What skeletons are in the proverbial closet, eh? Ever seen something out of the corner of your eye that you just couldn't explain? Ever feel afraid when there was nothing around to scare you? Ever see something that felt wrong as if out of its time?" he gushed conspiratorially.

"You're not from Paranormal Ulster are you?" the man cringed.

"I'm not from paranormal anything but still though, doesn't it intrigue you? So many reported accounts of visitations; they can't all be delusional or lying?"

"Yes they can!" he seemed to anger. "But it's not these imaginative fools I worry about, normally there is no malice or falsehood in their tales, just misunderstandings. But I am a lot more afraid of the living than the dead. Opportunists that feed off people's insecurities, like that missing boy. Snatched right from the terrace we're staying in and now the media are excusing the demented and cruel actions of a criminal with stories of superstition and scare mongering," he spat distastefully.

"Missing boy?" Rose looked worried and hazarded a glance at the pensive Doctor.

"Yeah, Peter Middleton. Eight years old. Went missing on a Boy Scout trip just two days ago. There been no hide or hair of him since. His poor parents, there's nothing worst that not knowing and of course the boys are using it as gossip fodder to terrify the younger groups," he sighed, deflating at the ludicrous impropriety of human nature.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Web," the Doctor rose and shuffled out of the pew, minus his scrambled eggs and dislodging Rose in the process, signalling that the conversation was over.

"But wait, I didn't get your name?" he shouted as the Doctor hurtled towards the door.

"Van Helsing, Erin Brockovich, the boy who cried wolf and no one believed. I am the truth in a journal of lies and I am the Doctor and the man who believes the story of a scared, little boy and I'm on call!"


	4. Chapter 4

So many thanks to you wonderful people who had read and reviewed and made me smile. There is truth in disguise in this chapter and much implied angst though I mainly let the words speak for themselves. I don't think I need to explain the relevance to fellow whovians!

Chapter 4 ~ Love's Labour's Lost

The Doctor punched at buttons and controls on the console, "Yes, as I suspected that young boy disappeared from the very room we materialised in, we were just off by a couple of days."

"So what now?"

"What say we take another look at that church in the daylight, see if we can solve this riddle?"

Rose wasn't convinced; the dead were notoriously hard to engage in conversation.

"Come on, you and me? We're like arsenic and old lace!" he beamed with pride.

"What so you're poisonous and deadly and I'm an old maid?" she accused.

"Ok, bad example. What about Starsky and Hutch or Ben and Jerry. I love their cookie dough ice cream!"

"How about you play the part of the eccentric alien with an insatiable thirst for trouble and I'll be the long suffering companion who bails you out of it?" she joked, fixing his tie and smoothing down the lapels of his coarse, pin-stripped jacket. He cocked an amused eyebrow at her, "Ready mummy?"

"Oi! Enough of that or I'm take you over my knee and spank you!" she glared.

"Promise?" he quipped before sobering and flushing in a delightful shade of red, the 'smacks' unnecessary.

"You kinky bastard! No wonder my mum's obsessed with your intentions." She playfully slapped his arm, feeling a little hot and bothered by certain ensuing mental imaginary.

"I'll have you know that I'm the perfect gentlemen," he recovered smugly.

"Well as you've taught me, language is relevant. Perfect gentlemen compared to a farting Slitheen maybe or a barbaric, tribal leader, looking for a virginal sacrifice?"

"Move it, Tyler. Before I start to comment on how you ain't no lady! Flirting with Captain Jack like he was a piece of meat on a spit. You bated your eye lashes at Shakespeare and he wrote you a bloody sonnet," he exclaimed, hand rising to ruffle in frustration.

"You practically snogged a tree," she retorted, "And what about Madame Fish-face?"

"Now that's unfair, she kissed me and you were in a totally other time zone and giggling with Mr. Mickey the idiot while I was single handedly trying to save history," he pouted.

"I don't want to know what you get up to single handedly but you're so not as a-sexual as you get on!" She raised teasing eyebrows at him before realising that this line of mockery would probably lead to less hand holding and a stubborn celibacy in her "foxy Doctor"!

Before he could respond she cut in with a suggestive, "So are you taking me up the aisle then Doctor or should we neglect the church for an old fashioned dual, pistols at dawn?"

"I've never liked guns," he concluded before reaching unabashedly for her hand and tugging her back to the world where the present was the past.

The church was much less ominous in the glaring light of day and the pair secretly hoped that an easy resolution was in sight. It was still early morning and it seemed that tourists didn't get up too early so they pretty much had the place to themselves as the old wooden door creaked open to the church and the Doctor and Rose entered cautiously and ever alert.

Even the invigorating and playful sun did little to lighten the sense of burden and weariness from the crumbling stones. They walked in silence down the aisle expectantly but saw nothing out of the ordinary in the well worn cushioned seats or discarded Bibles perched in the pews.

As they neared the alter Rose felt a strange sensation like something being absorbed into her skin, a rush of a non-existent breeze and the brush of a consciousness that was not her own. She wobbled precariously feeling faint and somehow overwhelmed, the bleaching rays too bright, their footsteps too loud and the smell of history and time too pungent. She naturally reached for the Doctor but he was donning his brainy specks and riffling through old parish documents, grown yellow and dusty, hidden under a lectern.

She opened her mouth to speak, when out of nowhere a flood of passion, love and embittered pain rose like a tsunami in her throat and worked the taught strings of her vocal chords, "It's not fair," she stammered suddenly, feeling the need to cry as her head buzzed with pressure and emotion. The Doctor snapped upright and turned to face her.

"What?"

"It's not fair. Why do we have to be so different? Why do we have to be separated by Time and responsibility? Why can't I love you freely and unashamed? No one knows you like I do. No one will ever love you as much as I do, so completely, so foolishly." Tears did fall then but silently and ignored as she trembled with some force stronger than reason or control.

She looked so young, so pure and earnest. Her golden hair caught the early morning sunlight and enveloped her in an aura of luminescent beauty and soft, warm flesh. He knew he was staring as if she'd just recited the laws of Time in high Gallifreyan but in that moment he had never felt so human, so affected, so overjoyed and so deeply afraid.

In his most fanciful thoughts he occasionally dared to imagine a time when a man like him was free to love and be loved and always Rose Tyler was the smiling, amazing face that mirrored his, the hand that fit so perfectly into his own. He was so damaged, broken, battered and torn that he never believed that anyone could see past the scars and dangerous, looming power and knowledge to fragile hearts and a longing soul. He had sacrificed his very being to be moulded and tainted by the mocking whims of Time and existence, pulled and pushed, forced to his bruised knees and extolled to the highest mountain top. He ridden the wave of destiny, powerless to just drown and sink into oblivion and always presumed himself to be a wanderer through the ages, but never belonging, never finding rest or a home.

He was a man who fought for love but distanced himself from it never trusting that he was worthy of its caress, thinking it would burn like holy water upon an unclean spirit, a toy for inferior races and idealistic beings but not for himself. He had long since become an idea not a person, long since learnt that emotions were sacred but deadly. Yet something responded to this beneficent creature, something primal and beyond reason but he was too old and too tired to trust in hope again, not for him, not for the last of the Time Lords and murderer of his own people.

He edged toward her like he was stuck in the gravitational pull of a dying star and gently ghosted a tantalising touch over her young, perfect cheek. She nuzzled into him like a cat in a blanket, sighing mournfully into his cradled palm. Oh Rose, what could he say? He opened his mouth to speak but an urge not of his own overpowered and possessed him.

"I know, sweetheart. How many nights have a lay awake dreaming of you in my arms, safe and warm and where you belong? How many prayers have turned into curses at the very God I proclaim to adore? Florence, my love, the keeper of my heart. This blasphemy has to end. I am a man of the cloth and I can't let my own selfish desires cloud my duty and allegiance to a higher purpose, a greater love," his timbre was lilting like a soft lyrical serenade of a lamenting lire player.

She nodded imperceptivity into his hand, loathing acceptance and defeat apparent in every weak shift of muscle and strained breath.

"But how can I marry a man I do not love? Can that be God's will?" she pleaded quietly like a small child.

"I do not claim to answer for God, much too finite is my understanding but I know it would be foolish to sacrifice a joined place in heaven for a few years on this grey earth. Love can be learnt, familiarity breeds fondness and affection and Robert is a good man. He will treat you well, much more than an exiled priest could ever provide for you," he spoke softly and with much weariness and regret.

"I don't care for material wealth or propriety. You spend your life serving others but how can you hope to comfort their pain if you have not experienced their love? How can you testify and protect an emotion that you run from until one day the concept is so foreign that its importance is lost on you and everything you have built means nothing?" She matched his gesture, hesitantly stroking down a long sideburn and meekly touching his full, red lips that looked so divine she knew them to be a sin.

"By remembering what I feel now, for you. By keeping it alive when you are long gone and married to another and I am alone and loveless. It is not my will but God's and I must trust it and believe in the path He is guiding me. This pain, this light is but a flickering star, our light already dead but echoing through the vacuum of space. But love? That can never die and though I wish hourly that our circumstances were different I cannot change the past." His eyes belied such sorrow and resentment at an ignorant and unfeeling world that even his loving smile was dimmed by the strength of a sobering reality.

With infinite tenderness he brushed his lips to hers like he were kissing an angel, incorporeal and fleeting. Her breath shuddered as it mingled with his and the moist caress seemed to ground some electrical charge and light up her heart with passionate longing as she pulled him closer still and revelled in the feel of his lean, sharp frame and strong, trusted protection.

Inconsolably drifting apart to a decent distance she turned and walked towards the door as if in a trance, her body complying but her spirit residing in his embrace.

When the sweet, chilled air filled her lungs outside Rose jolted to awareness and cursed quietly at the unbidden arousal and quickly blossoming embarrassment. Converse clad feet echoed from behind, running at a pace to the door. They stood there in the sunlight blinking idiotically at one anther as the Doctor rocked on his heels and tried to unattach an ear lobe.

"Hmmm…hi?" she offered.

A nervous laugh left him in a gush of expelled air, "Hi yourself!"

"So…hmmm…that was weird, right?"

"Right."

"Right," she stuttered.

"Well…I'll just…pop back to the TARDIS to see if she picked up any strange readings in the area," he gestured madly but didn't move.

"Ok and I'll…hmmm…take a look around, see if the ghosts come out to play in the daylight!" she finished feeling that vocalisation was lame and inconsequential right now. How can you do small talk when there's a bloody, great big elephant in the room?

"Right!"

"Yeah!"

The Doctor keep twisting his hips towards where the TARDIS lay hidden like there was a compass in his trousers but evidently followed where they were leading him, glancing over his shoulder and offering her his best, "I'm always alright" grin which she returned, equally unconvincingly.

The path of true love never runs smooth nor, apparently, changes much with the ever spiralling, forward motion of Time. How her hearts broke at the familiarity of echoed words and lonely lives. How he wished the un-owned but eerily apt conversation and constantly cognisant rules and realities it voiced, away. Oh how a borrowed tongue could unman him and unveil confessions and curses like some cruel truth serum binding brutally to his soul. And above all was the disappointment and envy of the honesty of two dead lovers who neither had the whole universe nor the power of Time but bore more courage in that single moment than either of them had dared, great battles fought and revelations begun, shrinking in comparison to the exposure and vulnerability of owning one's own heart.


	5. Chapter 5

I was really pleased with how this was going but I'm really not sure now so I may end up rewriting this chapter. Nevertheless, I just want to take a moment to thank all of you who have stuck by me and been reading and reviewing because it really does mean a great deal, even though I haven't got back to you all yet with real life stresses! So more ghostly encounters in chapter 5 ~ Do no harm!

Chapter 5

Lucy Hartford, a primary three teacher was taking a leisurely morning stroll in the panoramic grounds when she spotted a young girl with pigtailed auburn hair and a light, summer dress in lemon and red flowers, crying against the wall of the schoolhouse.

"Hello, is anyone with you? Where are your parents dear?" The girl valiantly tired to reign in her sobs and looked with red, puffy eyes at the kindly stranger.

"Can you help me? Please? I'm scared and all alone!" She sounded so pitiful and Lucy hastened to her side, kneeling in the gravel and hushing her in calming, motherly tones.

"You poor love, it's ok. I'm here you're not alone anymore. What ever's the matter, eh? What has got that pretty face all sad and blue?" She clasped the child's hand and rubbed her thumb soothingly over her knuckles.

"She's inside. My mum. She's not moving. I don't know what happened. I don't know what to do" and the weeping broke out in earnest again as Lucy gently wrapped her in a sympathetic embrace before slowing getting to her feet and leading the girl into the old fashioned, school house.

"Sweetheart here's nobody here. See? Now what happened? I can help, you don't need to be afraid," she encouraged, bent to the little girl's level and feeling confused but oh so moved by the miserable plight of the abandoned child.

The sweet little girl suddenly smiled, a grin that stretched her face to unnatural proportions and showed off her pearly, white teeth. For some reason she seemed overjoyed and strangely confident. "You will help," she intoned.

Elongated, smokey shadows rose where there was neither structure nor sunlight to ghost a cast, their forms insubstantial and shimmering like a macabre, grey voile curtain.

The solid oak door of the school slammed shut muting a sudden agonising scream from within.

-x-

The clean, country air, well psychologically suggestive, clean, country air as the motorway was just beyond the estate, was noxious and alluring with the calm of the gentle turn of nature. The grass was so green and thick and the blue bells and adult trees so wild and free that the Doctor conducted the silent orchestra of nature's tingling bells in his mind to Pachell Bell's 'Canon'. Hands deep in his pockets and converse caking up dried dust devils on country tracks, he allowed his mind to quiet in the serenity of the dead village and not bounce off into every rabbit warren it fancied, getting lost in a tangle of earthen dust and stellar echoes.

"Morning!" he greeted jovially but absent mindedly to a duo of young ladies who giggled shyly in response and curtseyed meekly. With anything but Rose on his mind, which meant very little was actively on his mind other that stubbornly blocking Rose from his mind, it took him 17.56seconds to register that the girls in question had been dressed in soft light dresses, gathering under the bust, with embroidered lace and sheltering under a frilly, material parasol and, most startlingly, appeared to have no feet but merely glided along the ground as if walking on a footpath on meadowed hill several inches below the current terrain.

He whipped 180 degrees in a flurry of brown pinstripes but found only a family of football shirt, wearing kids and exhausted looking parents before smacking himself upside the forehead and checking that the ever astute Rose was nowhere in sight to mock him.

-x-

In this antiquated and often idealised time, Rose found her thoughts betraying her, echoing historic and luxurious Versailles and a golden haired seductress of unparalled charm and intelligence, speaking so hauntingly of her "lonely angel". Not for the first time she felt an all too human desperation to find a band aid big enough to quell the Doctor's burdened soul. Her life is fleeting; her presence temporary and his sorrows too great to cure with human psychology. Perhaps humanity can be capable of such forgiveness simply because they do not have the light years to squalor in guilt. Carpe Diem, for tomorrow we may die but isn't that true even for the mighty Timelord who calls Atlas a wouse and shoulders so many skies on his outwardly slender and diminutive shoulders? The curse of the Timelords would be a blessing to most but not to her Doctor who gets too involved and cares too much and loves…loves life and every interesting facet of it, including one Rose Marion Tyler;. He has a brain the size of the moon but hearts the size of the sun and it is unfair, so apocalyptically unfair that the defender of love, even with changing faces and numerous lives, dares not embrace it. He is the only man who knows the answer to the poignant question of whether love survives even death, into eternity. His playing of emotional dodgems suggests that yes, yes it does and perhaps that is something he just can't bear, certainly not alone.

The village is starting to come alive as she spies a glossy, ebony mare jostle in a harness as a man whips off his sneakers in favour of a pair of dusty, old boots and readies a simple carriage for tourists to travel in authentic, vintage fashion. She pauses at the bank and awkwardly shakes of the feeling that had she visited the solid structure in its prime, she'd be discarded with the 'riffraff' of society. The counters are solid mahogany, the windows are colourfully stained and there's a distinct absence of security glass and the smell of metal from outdated weights and balances.

Next stop is the manual printers with a huge press and individual, lettering stamps, not immaculately kept but with the ink spills of frequent use. The printer, a jovial man with a friendly smile and tweed cap, scares her half to death until he asks if she'd like an educational demonstration and she chides herself for her ghostly imagination.

The manse is beautiful, like a picture postage from the Cotswolds, freshly mown grass and blooming, fragrant flowers under its old, wooden windows and thatched roof. Inside there is a smell of the passage of time but it's exotic and comforting to her senses, like him, as she takes in the open fire, huge, soot blackened chimney, the butter churner, the rot iron headboards and sunken blankets in the smokey, diffused light and there's a period clad woman baking fresh bread and chatting away to visitors as she imparts the wonders of recent history.

She has a new respect and affection for the time, still dizzily transitioning from the foreign fears and emotions of a native, as she counts her blessings for the things that time has changed and feels fresh ignorance and embarrassment at how the Doctor must view her when scenes only a century before her birth seem ridiculous and fanciful in her own mind.

She's almost back to the red brick terraces when she feels a sudden stab of anxiety and uncontextualised fear. There's a doctor's office on her left and she peers through the door, edging in. Two rooms, one obviously kitted out for examinations and one lined with discoloured bottles, filled with foul smelling chemicals and housing a beautiful burgundy topped, writing desk for the scholarly physician of yore. It really is humbling and amazing to consider the wealth of emotion and life that must have sought help in these halls and she's staring like a kid on a school trip until she senses a darkening behind her, like a light bulb had suddenly gone out in the next room.

When she turns she stills at the vision of a man, dressed in a suit minus the jacket and his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, earnestly washing his hands in blood red water. He's trembling and muttering something inaudible under his breath. She watches as he takes off his glasses, pulling a signatured handkerchief from his pocket and rubbing off spatters of blood from the lenses.

Suddenly she's enveloped by this pungent, sick sensation, cramping with nausea and disgust, not in the way one would feel after a bad batch of prawns but as if witness to something so unholy and repugnant that her whole being is repelling her from the room. She starts to retch, grabbing onto the door frame for support but the man doesn't seem to notice her. She's hanging her head to the floor when she feels it, an empty, ominous presence. With reluctant eyes she gazes upwards and screams for there before her is a dark, billowing shadow, distinct but radiating something, something so strong her ears ache and she realises that there is a small trickle of blood dripping from her nose.

-x-

"Rose?" Oh will she ever stop feeling such irrational relief at the sound of that cry, even in the very thick of danger and dread?

The Doctor rounds the threshold with a slightly mistimed skid and in an instant she's in his arms and he's guiding her outside into the fresh, unsullied air.

She falls upon a kerb still gagging but the squeezing experience of some strange, internal compression has passed, the instinct to run or fight or scream, faded with the freedom of the outdoors.

The Doctor is crouched before her when she regains her awareness and frowning, first at the sonic and then at her although he quickly schools his features into ones of reassurance and concern.

He pulls out a TARDIS blue hanky and she automatically reaches for it before bashfully dropping her hand to her stomach and willing him to minister to her needs. He smiles fondly, dabbing at her nose, the little curve of skin that kisses her lips and then her full, girlish mouth. His gaze lingers on the spots of wiped blood with abhorrence that such a vital bodily fluid isn't safely encased inside the body as it should be but marring her pale, youthful complexion.

"Are you alright?" He knows he's acting possessive and protective and shaking more from a simple nose bleed than before a delegation of heavily armed invaders but he has to concentrate on tugging back on the urge to hold her so tightly that he can breathe her in and feel the beautiful pounding of her pulse next to his.

"Yeah," she sighs on a deep exhale.

"What was that thing?" she asks always believing her Doctor will have the answers.

"What thing?" She stares anxiously at him and when she doesn't answer he probes further, "What happened? I heard you scream? You ain't half got a set of lungs on you. I'd know that scream anywhere in the universe."

She smiles slightly and he moves to sit beside her, taking her hand and squeezing it more firmly when he finds it trembling.

"I don't know…I…felt…it's hard to explain. I was walking past the doctor's surgery and it was like my vision tunnelled, yeah, and everything seemed to be on mute so I went in. I'd been feeling a bit jumpy since the church and thought I was just imagining it but there was this man there only, he wasn't there. Well at least, I don't think he was there."

She risked a glance at him and found him understandably confused.

"I'm not telling this right."

"It's okay. I like the way you tell things. You often reveal more than you know by just talking and letting it all come out however it wills."

"Well there was a man dressed in an old fashioned suit and washing his hands like Lady Macbeth – as if he couldn't get them clean but he didn't acknowledge that I was there and come to think of it I couldn't even hear any water splashing. Then suddenly I just felt so sick and repulsed, I mean physically, I thought I was going to chuck and the room started to spin and then, out of nowhere, there was this figure, well more like a shadow just dark and malevolent and scary and I screamed. My ears felt like there was a brass band banging in them. My nose started to bleed and it hurt, it really hurt, even though nothing touched me and I felt trapped and desperate, like the walls were closing in."

"Oh Rose, I'm sorry." The Doctor brushed back her sweat damped hair that clung to her forehead like a lost limpet and put his arm round her shoulder, gently pulling her against him. He felt her breathing calm as she nuzzled into his chest and rested her palm over his hearts.

After a few moments she mumbled bleakly, "You didn't see anything?"

"No. Not in there but I was at the pub across the way when something similar appeared. I was trying to get a reading on it when you screamed."

"Bit early for a pint ain't it?" she teased and he chuckled for her.

"What was it?" she asked sheepishly.

"Some temporal wavelength entity. I'll have to consult the TARDIS."

"Translates as you don't know, right?" she prodded at him.

"Oi, oh ye of little faith. I have my theories, course I do - brilliant, me but I wouldn't want to speculate, not very scientific and all." She laughed, pushing herself upright and carefully fixing his skewed tie. For a moment their eyes meet and a million languages of the universe seemed to speak between them but neither dared to try to translate.

"Whatever it is, it emits a hefty level of infrasound which can cause anyone directly situated to experience pain and bleeding from the orifices and I reckon it's responsible for the sudden increase in 'paranormal activity'. You see quantum physists conjecture that the mind, our thoughts create energy that can physical effect our surroundings. We are all connected; even the air we breathe is made up of thousands of tiny molecules, invisible to the naked eye, that's how sound can travel in waves through it, resonating and pulsing one atom into the next.

Many believe that ghosts are actually latent energy signatures where something so traumatic has occurred that the very atmosphere holds a residue of the emotional energy discharged. Places like churches and hospitals have been absorbing this intense outpouring of energy for centuries which is why our psyches pick up on odd feelings and sensations. But this many 'ghosts', this frequently, can't be a coincidence or the whole planet would readily accept their existence as fact. No, something is stimulating that temporal energy and has an agenda all of its own.

You must remember that these sightings can't harm you, they're neither sentient nor current but they can make you feel certain things because of the charge in the room."

She nodded numbly while the Doctor marvelled again at the strength of such a fragile flower.


	6. Chapter 6

I was really pleased with how this was going but I'm really not sure now so I may end up rewriting this chapter. Nevertheless, I just want to take a moment to thank all of you who have stuck by me and been reading and reviewing because it really does mean a great deal, even though I haven't got back to you all yet with real life stresses! So more ghostly encounters in chapter 5 ~ Do no harm!

Chapter 5

Lucy Hartford, a primary three teacher was taking a leisurely morning stroll in the panoramic grounds when she spotted a young girl with pigtailed auburn hair and a light, summer dress in lemon and red flowers, crying against the wall of the schoolhouse.

"Hello, is anyone with you? Where are your parents dear?" The girl valiantly tired to reign in her sobs and looked with red, puffy eyes at the kindly stranger.

"Can you help me? Please? I'm scared and all alone!" She sounded so pitiful and Lucy hastened to her side, kneeling in the gravel and hushing her in calming, motherly tones.

"You poor love, it's ok. I'm here you're not alone anymore. What ever's the matter, eh? What has got that pretty face all sad and blue?" She clasped the child's hand and rubbed her thumb soothingly over her knuckles.

"She's inside. My mum. She's not moving. I don't know what happened. I don't know what to do" and the weeping broke out in earnest again as Lucy gently wrapped her in a sympathetic embrace before slowing getting to her feet and leading the girl into the old fashioned, school house.

"Sweetheart here's nobody here. See? Now what happened? I can help, you don't need to be afraid," she encouraged, bent to the little girl's level and feeling confused but oh so moved by the miserable plight of the abandoned child.

The sweet little girl suddenly smiled, a grin that stretched her face to unnatural proportions and showed off her pearly, white teeth. For some reason she seemed overjoyed and strangely confident. "You will help," she intoned.

Elongated, smokey shadows rose where there was neither structure nor sunlight to ghost a cast, their forms insubstantial and shimmering like a macabre, grey voile curtain.

The solid oak door of the school slammed shut muting a sudden agonising scream from within.

-x-

The clean, country air, well psychologically suggestive, clean, country air as the motorway was just beyond the estate, was noxious and alluring with the calm of the gentle turn of nature. The grass was so green and thick and the blue bells and adult trees so wild and free that the Doctor conducted the silent orchestra of nature's tingling bells in his mind to Pachell Bell's 'Canon'. Hands deep in his pockets and converse caking up dried dust devils on country tracks, he allowed his mind to quiet in the serenity of the dead village and not bounce off into every rabbit warren it fancied, getting lost in a tangle of earthen dust and stellar echoes.

"Morning!" he greeted jovially but absent mindedly to a duo of young ladies who giggled shyly in response and curtseyed meekly. With anything but Rose on his mind, which meant very little was actively on his mind other that stubbornly blocking Rose from his mind, it took him 17.56seconds to register that the girls in question had been dressed in soft light dresses, gathering under the bust, with embroidered lace and sheltering under a frilly, material parasol and, most startlingly, appeared to have no feet but merely glided along the ground as if walking on a footpath on meadowed hill several inches below the current terrain.

He whipped 180 degrees in a flurry of brown pinstripes but found only a family of football shirt, wearing kids and exhausted looking parents before smacking himself upside the forehead and checking that the ever astute Rose was nowhere in sight to mock him.

-x-

In this antiquated and often idealised time, Rose found her thoughts betraying her, echoing historic and luxurious Versailles and a golden haired seductress of unparalled charm and intelligence, speaking so hauntingly of her "lonely angel". Not for the first time she felt an all too human desperation to find a band aid big enough to quell the Doctor's burdened soul. Her life is fleeting; her presence temporary and his sorrows too great to cure with human psychology. Perhaps humanity can be capable of such forgiveness simply because they do not have the light years to squalor in guilt. Carpe Diem, for tomorrow we may die but isn't that true even for the mighty Timelord who calls Atlas a wouse and shoulders so many skies on his outwardly slender and diminutive shoulders? The curse of the Timelords would be a blessing to most but not to her Doctor who gets too involved and cares too much and loves…loves life and every interesting facet of it, including one Rose Marion Tyler;. He has a brain the size of the moon but hearts the size of the sun and it is unfair, so apocalyptically unfair that the defender of love, even with changing faces and numerous lives, dares not embrace it. He is the only man who knows the answer to the poignant question of whether love survives even death, into eternity. His playing of emotional dodgems suggests that yes, yes it does and perhaps that is something he just can't bear, certainly not alone.

The village is starting to come alive as she spies a glossy, ebony mare jostle in a harness as a man whips off his sneakers in favour of a pair of dusty, old boots and readies a simple carriage for tourists to travel in authentic, vintage fashion. She pauses at the bank and awkwardly shakes of the feeling that had she visited the solid structure in its prime, she'd be discarded with the 'riffraff' of society. The counters are solid mahogany, the windows are colourfully stained and there's a distinct absence of security glass and the smell of metal from outdated weights and balances.

Next stop is the manual printers with a huge press and individual, lettering stamps, not immaculately kept but with the ink spills of frequent use. The printer, a jovial man with a friendly smile and tweed cap, scares her half to death until he asks if she'd like an educational demonstration and she chides herself for her ghostly imagination.

The manse is beautiful, like a picture postage from the Cotswolds, freshly mown grass and blooming, fragrant flowers under its old, wooden windows and thatched roof. Inside there is a smell of the passage of time but it's exotic and comforting to her senses, like him, as she takes in the open fire, huge, soot blackened chimney, the butter churner, the rot iron headboards and sunken blankets in the smokey, diffused light and there's a period clad woman baking fresh bread and chatting away to visitors as she imparts the wonders of recent history.

She has a new respect and affection for the time, still dizzily transitioning from the foreign fears and emotions of a native, as she counts her blessings for the things that time has changed and feels fresh ignorance and embarrassment at how the Doctor must view her when scenes only a century before her birth seem ridiculous and fanciful in her own mind.

She's almost back to the red brick terraces when she feels a sudden stab of anxiety and uncontextualised fear. There's a doctor's office on her left and she peers through the door, edging in. Two rooms, one obviously kitted out for examinations and one lined with discoloured bottles, filled with foul smelling chemicals and housing a beautiful burgundy topped, writing desk for the scholarly physician of yore. It really is humbling and amazing to consider the wealth of emotion and life that must have sought help in these halls and she's staring like a kid on a school trip until she senses a darkening behind her, like a light bulb had suddenly gone out in the next room.

When she turns she stills at the vision of a man, dressed in a suit minus the jacket and his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, earnestly washing his hands in blood red water. He's trembling and muttering something inaudible under his breath. She watches as he takes off his glasses, pulling a signatured handkerchief from his pocket and rubbing off spatters of blood from the lenses.

Suddenly she's enveloped by this pungent, sick sensation, cramping with nausea and disgust, not in the way one would feel after a bad batch of prawns but as if witness to something so unholy and repugnant that her whole being is repelling her from the room. She starts to retch, grabbing onto the door frame for support but the man doesn't seem to notice her. She's hanging her head to the floor when she feels it, an empty, ominous presence. With reluctant eyes she gazes upwards and screams for there before her is a dark, billowing shadow, distinct but radiating something, something so strong her ears ache and she realises that there is a small trickle of blood dripping from her nose.

-x-

"Rose?" Oh will she ever stop feeling such irrational relief at the sound of that cry, even in the very thick of danger and dread?

The Doctor rounds the threshold with a slightly mistimed skid and in an instant she's in his arms and he's guiding her outside into the fresh, unsullied air.

She falls upon a kerb still gagging but the squeezing experience of some strange, internal compression has passed, the instinct to run or fight or scream, faded with the freedom of the outdoors.

The Doctor is crouched before her when she regains her awareness and frowning, first at the sonic and then at her although he quickly schools his features into ones of reassurance and concern.

He pulls out a TARDIS blue hanky and she automatically reaches for it before bashfully dropping her hand to her stomach and willing him to minister to her needs. He smiles fondly, dabbing at her nose, the little curve of skin that kisses her lips and then her full, girlish mouth. His gaze lingers on the spots of wiped blood with abhorrence that such a vital bodily fluid isn't safely encased inside the body as it should be but marring her pale, youthful complexion.

"Are you alright?" He knows he's acting possessive and protective and shaking more from a simple nose bleed than before a delegation of heavily armed invaders but he has to concentrate on tugging back on the urge to hold her so tightly that he can breathe her in and feel the beautiful pounding of her pulse next to his.

"Yeah," she sighs on a deep exhale.

"What was that thing?" she asks always believing her Doctor will have the answers.

"What thing?" She stares anxiously at him and when she doesn't answer he probes further, "What happened? I heard you scream? You ain't half got a set of lungs on you. I'd know that scream anywhere in the universe."

She smiles slightly and he moves to sit beside her, taking her hand and squeezing it more firmly when he finds it trembling.

"I don't know…I…felt…it's hard to explain. I was walking past the doctor's surgery and it was like my vision tunnelled, yeah, and everything seemed to be on mute so I went in. I'd been feeling a bit jumpy since the church and thought I was just imagining it but there was this man there only, he wasn't there. Well at least, I don't think he was there."

She risked a glance at him and found him understandably confused.

"I'm not telling this right."

"It's okay. I like the way you tell things. You often reveal more than you know by just talking and letting it all come out however it wills."

"Well there was a man dressed in an old fashioned suit and washing his hands like Lady Macbeth – as if he couldn't get them clean but he didn't acknowledge that I was there and come to think of it I couldn't even hear any water splashing. Then suddenly I just felt so sick and repulsed, I mean physically, I thought I was going to chuck and the room started to spin and then, out of nowhere, there was this figure, well more like a shadow just dark and malevolent and scary and I screamed. My ears felt like there was a brass band banging in them. My nose started to bleed and it hurt, it really hurt, even though nothing touched me and I felt trapped and desperate, like the walls were closing in."

"Oh Rose, I'm sorry." The Doctor brushed back her sweat damped hair that clung to her forehead like a lost limpet and put his arm round her shoulder, gently pulling her against him. He felt her breathing calm as she nuzzled into his chest and rested her palm over his hearts.

After a few moments she mumbled bleakly, "You didn't see anything?"

"No. Not in there but I was at the pub across the way when something similar appeared. I was trying to get a reading on it when you screamed."

"Bit early for a pint ain't it?" she teased and he chuckled for her.

"What was it?" she asked sheepishly.

"Some temporal wavelength entity. I'll have to consult the TARDIS."

"Translates as you don't know, right?" she prodded at him.

"Oi, oh ye of little faith. I have my theories, course I do - brilliant, me but I wouldn't want to speculate, not very scientific and all." She laughed, pushing herself upright and carefully fixing his skewed tie. For a moment their eyes meet and a million languages of the universe seemed to speak between them but neither dared to try to translate.

"Whatever it is, it emits a hefty level of infrasound which can cause anyone directly situated to experience pain and bleeding from the orifices and I reckon it's responsible for the sudden increase in 'paranormal activity'. You see quantum physists conjecture that the mind, our thoughts create energy that can physical effect our surroundings. We are all connected; even the air we breathe is made up of thousands of tiny molecules, invisible to the naked eye, that's how sound can travel in waves through it, resonating and pulsing one atom into the next.

Many believe that ghosts are actually latent energy signatures where something so traumatic has occurred that the very atmosphere holds a residue of the emotional energy discharged. Places like churches and hospitals have been absorbing this intense outpouring of energy for centuries which is why our psyches pick up on odd feelings and sensations. But this many 'ghosts', this frequently, can't be a coincidence or the whole planet would readily accept their existence as fact. No, something is stimulating that temporal energy and has an agenda all of its own.

You must remember that these sightings can't harm you, they're neither sentient nor current but they can make you feel certain things because of the charge in the room."

She nodded numbly while the Doctor marvelled again at the strength of such a fragile flower.


End file.
